Mar 14, 2018

Look after the pennies... and hope people won’t notice pounds don’t go as far as they used to

The Daily Mail is calling the government’s review of 1p and 2p pieces a "PR disaster" but the opposite is almost certainly true. This looks like a calculated - and fairly effective - move to control the day's news.

Having seen certain papers get dewy-eyed about blue passports and a new royal yacht, the government's various PR advisers will have known a threat to 1p and 2p pieces would elicit a similar response.The government’s PR team will have been anticipating the papers going big on small change and it's difficult to believe the resulting coverage wasn't the intended outcome.

Trivial distraction

Logic dictates 1p and 2p pieces cannot be long for this world. So while their inevitable demise may stir some nostalgic opposition, it is a trivial distraction at worst, which in government PR terms can often be the best kind of distraction. It won't have any lasting negative impact on the government but it will create some noise for a while in the media. And if you can make some noise by getting people to think they care about something trivial, it is almost certainly drowning out something they should probably care about more.